People report that they find it beneficial when a therapist tells them to stop and go inside and feel their feelings. And sometimes they are asked to be curious, about whether it’s familiar, and what it reminds them of, and to see what about them and their past it has to do with. Something shifts.

It’s that thing about getting out of your head and being present with what’s in the body. Strange how that can result is a shift, but it does.

People like this.

Some people don’t know what this means, this feeling your feelings thing. Think of it as sensations, that’s all.

Before I turned 30, I came to the idea that Relationship 101 is about not trying to change your partner.
I still forget that. It’s a meditation to see the person as s/he really is, rather than how you wish s/he would be.

Now that I’ve been working as a counselor, I’m thinking that Relationship 201 is about taking responsibility for our experience. It’s a shift in consciousness that really can make things fly. Without it, it’s going to be round after round of the same thing. You guessed it. Reactivity, blame, struggle.

Other things come to me. Relationship 301. Speaking up. Asking for what you want instead of expecting the other person to unilaterally act on some prescience.

I guess all this in some way relates to what it is to be an individual and to let the other person be the individual that s/he is as well.

I like to sort things out.
The needs from the hurts.
Where does it all come from.
So you might not get your needs met. That’s one thing. Not the end of the world. In fact, you can probably count on not getting your needs met as much as you’d like, as much of the time.
So we might be bummed out. Ok. Disappointed. Perhaps. Profoundly. Perhaps. Deeply let down. Ok.

But why feel hurt over it?

Probably because we think the other person doesn’t care about us?
That starts to point to it.
Whether they care or not probably says more about the other person than it does about us, but that’s how we take it. So it’s about how we take it; the meaning we make of it.

I think it’s so unnerving to us because when we think that the other person doesn’t care about us, it touches that part of us that believes we are not worthy of caring. That’s a painful thing. Again, going back to what John Welwood talks about.

Here are words from someone describing their experience:

It’s about distinguishing between needs not being met (and how one responds to that), and one’s own sense of self and self-worth (and how one cares for that piece), and how one inhabits that space as “mine” – as one’s own, and owns that, so it’s not so easily penetrated by someone whose actions may have meant to hurt you, or not. It gives you a lot of freedom and helps you see what’s yours and what’s theirs and helps you see them – as people with their own struggles.

So remember, even if someone doesn’t respond the way you might really have wished for, and even if someone really doesn’t really care about you or “honor” your needs, your needs are always valid and you are always worthy of love.

A friend of mine got married some years ago, and her husband did a play on that notion, listing reasons as part of his proposal. Good idea, I thought. I think it gave me the idea.

I first started doing counseling at test sites in SF for HIV and other STDs.
This was with the AIDS Health Project.
I spoke with people about their concerns and behaviors before I administered a test, and then met with them a week later to give them results and talk further.

Over the years, I collected reasons why people “put themselves at risk,” as we say.
Some of the reasons are poignant.
It relates to my previous post, about our actions, and what they really reflect.

It’s a rich subject. Everything’s a risk, including walking across the street. So it relates to things like perceptions, sense of self, and even spirituality.

Is it really true that our actions reflect our values? It turns out that it is not always true.

When you aren’t fire-walking or otherwise acting in alignment with your highest self, it could be the case that our actions reflect any of the following:

our fears

other limiting beliefs, negative cognitions, doubts, guilt

lack of imagination, black and white thinking

habit

stuckness

inertia

laziness

stubbornness, ego! The natural knee-jerk defiance in the face of a request. The needs of independence, autonomy, choice, free will, freedom.

attachments – to things, to places

attachment to a sense of identity – who would I be if I changed? If I did something else or moved somewhere else – who would I be? Avoiding the existential anxiety of that experience. Again, ego!

the effects of a bad night’s sleep

So when someone says they love you but they want to spend their evening attending to organizing their rock collection, I hope that keeping in mind these other possible meanings for people’s actions helps you take it less personally.

And instead of struggling around the push-pull of our desires with another person, isn’t the idea for all of us just to have caring for ourselves and each other around our experiences?

I was into the perspective of David Schnarch for a while. I still keep his perspective about a solid self, but now I think he’s missing two key elements. First, he dismisses the human experience – the very notion that to be HUMAN is to have a reflected and dependent sense of self !!!! Listen to the John Welwood recording on SoundsTrue.com. And then he seems to miss the importance of empathy. Empathy for the human struggle that ensues from this tragic-comedy of a dependent sense of self! Again, Welwood lays it out nicely.

More and more, I’m seeing how we are human in ways I had not been aware of, or that I had not been so willing to acknowledge.

It’s so compelling to think that we just have to toughen our skins and grow up. Schnarch’s battle cry sounds so cool and tough and even sexy. Wouldn’t you agree? Everyone wants to jump on it and he taunts those who are not on board as being babies who need to grow up and derides therapists who work with an attachment model like Sue Johnson as just enabling and furthering a pathetic sense of dependency.

I believe the problem with his model is that it isn’t based in reality, so I don’t see how it can work. Unless a person is in an enlightened state, it’s not how people actually are! You’d be hard-pressed to meet someone who really doesn’t give a shit about what other people think of them. Just read the writings of Pema Chödron when she shares about her own internal experience. But what I have seen actually working for couples is simply acknowledging, allowing, and owning and expressing this vulnerable stuff, rather than trying to transcend or deny our essential humanness. And by expressing, I don’t mean rampaging. Instead, just owning it, rather that it owning us. I stole that quote from Tony Robbins.

And in the end, just holding all of it with caring. Stephen Goodman at CIIS said that as far as Tibetan Buddhism is concerned, “compassion is the only game in town.”

Implicit in that caring is a larger state of consciousness. A self that’s not a reflection of someone else’s opinion. I love how John Welwood says it, so nonchalantly, that of course, we also know that we are fundamentally OK.

I also love how Welwood doesn’t say that this predicament of being human is good or bad. He just sees it as a path of growth. To try and get a grip, and then relate to others with transparency and consciousness. So I have been using this as my model now.

There isn’t anything new about this, but maybe listening to Welwood got me clearer on it. And he also adds some additional things that I had not heard that felt refreshing – like his explanation for the ambivalence that people feel in relationship – both the love and the resentment we feel for being dependent on someone for our sense of being loved. And how hard it is not only to love unconditionally, but to receive love fully, and how it’s all mixed up with that tender spot inside, so it’s no wonder we are wary of being authentic with others.

Enjoy the perspective of Phil Stutz (and his New York accent) and Barry Michel, and their book called The Tools.

This can help with some kinds of procrastination and focus.
Left to our own devices, we avoid discomfort. So it takes a conscious effort to move towards our tasks, towards the discomfort. Do we want to be on our deathbed kicking ourselves for playing it safe and not living our life? In the end, facing things is usually not so painful. It’s just that we usually are sleepwalking.

And, to borrow from Carolyn Myss, it takes vigilance to notice when we are shifting from our conscious choices. It’s a 24-hour job to be on top of ourselves, to ask ourselves, “where I am right now? what am I doing? where is my soul?” And to call it back, over and over again, into the present moment, to what matters.